Blog

This is where I post my new stories, thoughts and ramblings on wedding, engagement and portrait photography. Sometimes my personal stuff gets mixed in here as well. A chance for you to get to know me and my photography on a more personal level.

As you may or may not know, I had the opportunity to shoot my first wedding at the end of December for a friend/co-worker. No more than 24 hours after I committed to being the photographer I pretty much had a meltdown. I was convinced that I was going to ruin her whole wedding. I wondered what made me think even for a millisecond that I had enough experience to shoot an actual wedding. I mean, you only get one chance at these things. After the initial panic attack, I tried not to think too much about what a failure I was going to be and started doing my research. I recruited another girl from work to help me so at least if something went wrong I would have someone else to share the blame with. We visited the location and did some test shots. I googled myself into oblivion to get indoor wedding photography tips and ideas. I prepared myself to the best of my ability and guess what? It turned out ok. I was not a complete failure!

I feel like I learned a lot and I'm thankful that Crissy trusted me enough to even consider me as her photographer! The most notable things I learned were the reality of how much work is really involved (prep, shooting and post production) and the reality that not only can things go wrong but they will. My camera stopped working for about 15 minutes halfway through the day. Did I sweat bullets? Yep. Thankfully I had a backup photographer and my camera started working again. I had all of my outdoor shots planned – it was breathtaking scenery. Did it rain? Hell yes, it poured. In fact it was so foggy you couldn’t even see the view. Could we do any outdoor shots? Nope. My main concern about visiting the venue was the lack of lighting in the stairwell the bride was to walk down during the ceremony. Not only was it a dark and cramped area but we couldn’t figure out how to turn on the lights. I cranked up my ISO and prayed to the grain gods to go easy on me. I made due and think I did the best I could given the circumstances. AND I had a blast.

I have been dying to share some of the pictures. I can’t post many yet because the groom and family haven’t seen all of them but I can offer a tiny little preview.....more to come!